Rehabilitation Session One
by Olofa
Summary: Helen (as Elastigirl) visits Evelyn in prison for a rehabilitation session. But it's not all talk therapy and forgiveness.


Helen resented how good Evelyn looked. Not good the way most people would define it. Evelyn's prison uniform, plain grey button-up shirt and plain grey pants, rumpled and worn, were not anyone's idea of "pretty" or "stylish". But they matched Evelyn's perma-disheveled hair, heavy-lidded eyes and knowing smirk, her look of just having fallen out of bed and ready to climb back in, and it yanked at something in Helen's gut. The fluorescent lighting in that plain room on the other side of the two-way mirror, even the shining cuffs chained to the bar on the table where Evelyn sat alone, couldn't dispel the feeling.

Helen had a lot of reason to be furious with Evelyn, even to hate her. She had to hold on to that.

She pressed the button on the microphone in front of her. "Good afternoon, Miss Deavor."

Evelyn didn't need to press a button to respond, even if they would've let hear near one. "Elastigirl? El! So you're the one 'rehabilitating' me. C'mon in, we'll talk. It'll be like old times."

"This is not a social call, Miss Deavor."

"El, call me Evelyn. Please. Like you used to."

"The name is 'Elastigirl', Miss Deavor."

"Don't be like that. You said I could call you El."

"I said my friends call me El."

Evelyn's crooked smile tightened to a thin line, then softened again. "You know what? That's okay. Elastigirl. I did some bad things...a lot of bad things, fair enough...so I suppose I had that coming." She smiled warmly at the mirror, in the direction of where she hoped Helen was. "Even if things are...like this...I'm glad you're here."

"Once again, Miss Deavor, this is a rehabilitation session, not a social call."

"I don't care, El! ...lastigirl. I'm sick of everyone here. I need to talk to, well, someone like you. Someone who gets it."

"Who gets what?"

Evelyn shrugged. "Everything. You don't know what it's like here. The Red Widow can't talk about anything except 'Ze Glorious Revolution'." She made quotes in the air at the phrase. "Fuzette just waits for Bomb Voyage to come get her, which you know he'll never do. She's nothing without him; she shouldn't even be in here. Mirage spends her time telling her to never trust a man. I get the feeling she wants to be... _very_ good friends with Fuzette." She grew still. "I miss talking with you, Elastigirl. You're smart. You're funny. God knows you're not boring." She sighed. "I miss you, El."

Helen sighed (pressing the button first so Evelyn could hear her). "Miss Deavor, do you know why I'm here?"

"For...rehabilitation, right? We're going to talk about my feelings, and how I've learned from my mistakes, and I'll become a better person. Right?"

"No," said Helen, her no-nonsense Georgia accent giving a chilling finality to her words. "And I _meant_ do you know why I, specifically, am the person Winston chose for this 'rehab project' of his?"

Evelyn smiled with her lips, but her eyes were guarded. "Because you know me. We have a rapport. Remember I said I'm not good with people? You're different."

Helen's voice was louder, making the PA speakers in the interrogation room buzz. "The reason I'm here is- Well, Mr. Incredible is a good man, but he solves problems by hitting them. Most of the new supers are still learning how to be who they are. And _Frozone?_ Huh."

Evelyn blinked. "What about Frozone?"

"Oh, honey. A proud black man enslaved by a rich white woman? You even called yourself ScreenSLAVER? Good Lord, what were you thinking?! You may be a genius with electronics but you do not have the sense God gave a goose."

"Oh." Evelyn's face went blank. "So the reason you're here…"

"I'm the one trustworthy person who's least likely to kill you."

They sat, uncomfortable silences on each side of the mirror.

Quietly, Evelyn said, "I hate prison, Elastigirl."

"Oh, let me call up Doctor Micron to play the world's smallest violin for you," replied Helen, without enthusiasm.

"That's… Don't be like that. Please. You're better than that." Evelyn looked away. "One of us should be better than that." She sat up, looked at the mirror again, addressing either Helen or her own reflection. "I design circuits. It keeps me sane, even if I'll never get to build them. They make me use markers. They won't even let me have a pencil because graphite is a conductor. Resistor, technically. Every piece of metal here is stainless steel."

"So?"

"They're afraid if I get hold of two dissimilar metals and an acidic liquid to use as an electrolyte I'll make a battery. What could I do with that? I'm an engineer, not a wizard." She smiled crookedly. "You're a smart woman, you know how I could get a mildly acidic liquid if I had a minute of privacy, which of course I never do and it's making me crazy."

"Should've thought of that before going on a crime spree," said Helen in her mom voice.

Evelyn frowned. "I'm sorry, Elastigirl. I'm rambling." She sighed, shook her head. "I am sorry. I really am. I am 'sincerely repentant' as they say in the parole hearings, if I ever get one. I… I am. I know what I did and I'm truly, truly sorry."

"I don't think you are." The intercom made Helen's voice sound even colder. "i don't think you do. Not completely."

The door at the side of the interrogation room opened and Elastigirl's arm snaked in. In her black-gloved fist was a pair of Screenslaver's mind control goggles.

For an instant, Evelyn's face lit up. She was proud of those goggles. Her larger plan may have ended in disaster, but the goggles were brilliant. Possibly her best work. Compact, efficient, robust, a miracle of innovation. A perfect-

And then it occurred to her what the goggles were for.

Her shoulders slumping in resignation, Evelyn didn't resist as Helen put the goggles on her. They activated, and Evelyn watched helplessly as her reflection lost all expression, her body passive.

Helen's pinky slid inside the handcuffs' keyholes and unlocked them, then her arm contracted out of the room, closing the door. Evelyn's body pushed itself away from the table and stood up.

"It wasn't easy for you to get permission to bring these goggles," Evelyn heard in her own voice. "Even with Winston vouching for you. But it was important."

 _Say something El_ , thought Evelyn. She felt like she was in a glass bubble inside her own head. _Talk to me._

Her voice continued. "I must've tried these goggles on myself at some point. But not with someone else. After all, who could I trust with my secret? Who could I trust, period?"

She saw herself in the mirror standing like a marionette, elbows up and hands dangling, head flopped to the side. "And now someone else is pulling my strings." Her body jounced around the room, a mockery of a puppet. "I'm your little toy now, your little plaything. La la la la la," said her toneless voice. Her body slumped into an ape-like crouch, back bent and arms dangling, then made a second tour around the room walking like a chimp. "I'm your lil' pet monkey, capering for your amusement."

She stood up, was made to walk towards the mirror. She faced her blank-eyed reflection. _Please stop this, El._ "Well that was humiliating. Of course, there's other ways you could humiliate me. And I can't do a damn thing about it." _Why won't you say these things, El? Why do you have to make_ _ **me**_ _say them?_ Evelyn's hands methodically unbuttoned her shirt and let it fall part way open. She saw, and she knew Helen saw, smooth skin from neck to navel, and her prison-issue brassiere, white turned grey with repeated laundering, underwires removed for fear of her using the metal in a circuit. Evelyn's hand rested on her midriff, then slid down. She couldn't control it, but she could feel it. Her hand paused at her waist, fingers poised to slip inside her waistband. For a long, still moment Evelyn waited to see what Helen would decide to do, her mind frantic, her body passive. Finally her hands buttoned up her shirt again.

Evelyn was relieved, although it has been so long since anyone had touched her or she had touched herself that she was still tingling at the possibility.

"You can make me do anything, make me say anything," Evelyn's voice resumed. "You can make me, oh, I don't know, lie to my family. Lie to my friends. Betray my husb- betray the people I love. Hurt people. Endanger the public. Go against everything I stand for. Humiliating me? Make me humiliate myself?" _Make it stop, El! Please make it stop!_ she screamed inside her head. "That's peanuts. Hell, look at what I did. I didn't even need the goggles to control you. I just had to make you think I was your friend. Make you think I liked you, that I thought you were…special to me. That I understood what you were going through. That we connected. Hah," she said, deadpan. "Manipulate you." _It wasn't like that! ...not completely, anyway._ "Then slap those goggles on your gullible stupid face and fuck you over good." Like a broken toy her arm came up, then dropped again. "You. The person who trusted me, who would've vouched for me, who came to me to help you find Screenslaver. I went into your head and I took you over. After I invaded your trust, I invaded your body the way no one ever could. You, and all those other people. I took your body and made you a tool, a thing, because that's what you are to me, because I don't give a fuck about you." Her arm jerked, her hand came up and hit her hard across the face, knocking herself a step sideways. The crack of hitting herself filled the room for an instant and was absorbed by the acoustic tile. The goggles slid off for a moment and she put them back in place.

Her body stood in front of the mirror again. There was a bold red mark on the side of her face. She stood for what felt like forever. Waiting. Wondering what Elastigirl was thinking and feeling. Thinking about what Screenslaver had done - what _she_ had done - to those people.

To her.

In the darkened room on the other side of the two-way mirror, Helen's face was illuminated by the lights from Screenslaver's control panel. Her finger rested on a black button. Press it, and Evelyn's memory of their session would be deleted. She would have no clue how Helen had humiliated her except for the hot red mark on her cheek.

Helen was tempted. She wasn't proud of what she'd done. It wasn't like her to be cruel, and it came uncomfortably easy to her. Maybe it would be best. For her and for Evelyn. She hesitated.

But the whole point was for Evelyn to learn from this. Painful as it was, if she blanked Evelyn's memory it would mean that this…thing…was for nothing. Nothing except revenge.

One of the curves on the console's oscilloscope suddenly became jagged, showing that Evelyn was fighting against the control. Helen looked up to see what she was trying to do.

The cords in Evelyn's neck stood out from the tension. Almost imperceptibly her head moved up and down. She was nodding.

Helen wasn't sure what Evelyn was agreeing to. Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe it meant that she was agreeing to whatever Helen choose to do. "Aw hell," she muttered to herself as her finger moved from the black erase button to the red off switch.

Evelyn saw her own eyes reflected as the goggles shut down. She waited in case it was a mistake, then took off the goggles. The tears trapped inside them spilled down her cheeks. She sat, set the goggles down on the far side of the table, and ratcheted the cuffs closed on her wrists.

Helen entered the room and sat across from her.

"Well, that was... horrible," said Evelyn, her crooked smile no longer knowing, but strained.

"I'm sorry, Evelyn."

Evelyn barked a laugh. "What you put me through? It was horrible. But it was also a fraction, a sliver of what I did to you. To the other supers. To that pizza boy. And you are apologizing to me. You're a good person, Elastigirl. A decent person."

"El."

Evelyn smiled softly. "El. I think that's one of the things about you that always fascinated me. You have the brain of a cynic but, somehow, you still have the heart of an optimist."

"I'm also sorry about making you, um, you know," said Helen, and she pointed to her own cheek.

Evelyn scoffed. "I had it coming. I deserved it." Her lips narrowed. "No, I needed it. All the things you made me say? I want to defend myself, I want to say it wasn't like that. But it was. It's not the way I thought it was. Not the way I saw myself. But it's how it was - how _**I**_ was."

"Evelyn. Hon."

"I was so smug. I thought I was saving people from blindly being manipulated by their TV screens, but what I did was a hundred times worse. A thousand. I was the blind one. Like you said, I'm an idiot."

"I did not say you were an idiot," protested Helen. "I _may_ have said you didn't have the sense God gave a goose, but that's not exactly the same thing."

They shared a chuckle. Evelyn sighed. "I'm gonna be honest with you."

Helen almost said, _That'd be nice,_ but stopped herself. "Okay."

"I've got a lot to think about. And I have a lot of feelings to sort through. I have a lot to work out, basically."

"Uh huh."

"But I have a real capacity for self-delusion."

"Most people do."

"Yeah. So, El? Are you going to be coming back? I think… I think I'm gonna need you to keep me honest. Make sure I stay on track."

"That's what I'm here for, hon."

"Thanks, El. And I'm not just saying that because I want to see you again."

"Why thank you, Miss Deavor." They shared a smile, tentative but hopeful. "And y'know, I was thinking about what you said before. About privacy and electrolytes and such."

Evelyn raised an eyebrow.

Damn that girl looks sexy when she raises an eyebrow. "Well, when I was a girl and I really needed to…relax? I would go to the school library or whatever, and sit in one of the carrels with a book open in front of me? And I'd just kick off my shoes and tuck one foot underneath me on the chair?" She tucked her foot up under herself and gave Evelyn a meaningful look until she did the same. "And then I'd just, you know…relax." She sat with her hands on the table in front of her and very subtly rocked back and forth.

Evelyn followed her example. She shifted until the pressure from her heel was in just the right spot. _Oh, that is nice._ "And that's how you used to... _relax?_ "

"Honey, some days I was so relaxed I'd stare at the same page for half an hour." She smiled like a wicked schoolgirl. "You learn some useful things when your parents send you off to Catholic school to keep you out of trouble." After a minute of sitting like that Helen said, "You may want to save that for the prison library later." Evelyn put her feet flat on the floor.

Evelyn said, "El?"

"Yeah?"

"You're a lot nicer to me now than when you first got here."

Helen looked up. "I was pretty mad at you. Partly I still am. But... I think you can change. I hope so. I mean, if I didn't think a person could change, wouldn't be much point in rehabilitation, would there?"

"Thank you." Evelyn reached out to put her hands on Helen's but was stopped by the handcuffs. Helen saw, and put her hands on Evelyn's. "And El? You were right. I was manipulating you. But I also liked you. I still do. That was real." She looked down, gave Helen's hands a squeeze as let them go.

"Yeah, well, I hope so." Helen got up to leave.

"So I'll see you…next week?"

"Count on it."

"And Elastigirl?"

"Yeah?"

"If you were to bring the goggles again, and wanted me to wear them?" Evelyn looked up at her. "That'd be okay."


End file.
